USA > South Carolina > Biographical sketches of the bench and bar of South Carolina, vol. I > Part 17
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speaker. When he concluded, in opposition to the measure, it was rejected by an overwhelming vote.
It will be remembered by many that the war of 1812 was opposed by the Federal party. Judge Huger was a member of that party. He, however, refused to go with them in their opposition. The contest, as he argued, was no longer as to domestic policy-it was between the country and a foreign nation ; aud his duty, he said, was to decide for his country. What she directed should have his obedience and aid. This noble line of conduct which he marked out, he pursued ; and the consequence was, while he was deserted by the violent Federalists, he was hailed as a true patriot by the great body of the people. In 1814 the State determined to raise a brigade of State troops to aid in the prosecution of the war. Mr. Huger was elected Brigadier-General, and hence acquired the title of General Huger. Owing to the close of the war in the early part of 1815, the brigade was never raised.
From that time to December, 1819, General Huger was a member of the House of Representatives. On questions of Parliamentary law, his opinion was regarded as decisive authority. On all questions of consequence he spoke, and was always heard with marked deference. For fifteen years he represented St. Andrew's Parish in the House of Represen- tatives. He was asked on some occasion, " What will your constituents think of a measure which had just been passed ?" " Think," said he, "they will think nothing about it-they expect me to think for them here." He denied forcibly and justly the doctrine of instruction by constituents. The Con- stitution, he said, was his instruction ; it told him, in the lan- guage of the oath of office, to " discharge the duties" of a Rep- resentative "to the best of his ability."
On 11th December, 1819, he was elected a Judge, and en- tered upon his duties with as perfect confidence in his abili- ties, honor and fidelity as ever was placed in any one by the people. He in this, as in every other office, did not disap- point them. Everywhere he did his duty, and did it well. The case of Thomas vs. Daniel, (2 McC. 354,) is selected as a specimen of Judge Huger's style, legal research and judg-
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ment. In 1828, the Judge became impressed with the neces- sity of retrenchment. He thought the salary of a Circuit Judge was too much. He therefore advised the Grand Juries to recommend a reduction. This was accordingly presented on his circuit, in the fall of 1828. The Legislature acted on it, and reduced the salary of a Circuit Judge to $2,500. He instantly resigned, and brought himself under the reduced salary. Together he and I were elected, in December, 1828 ; he in his own place, and I in the place of Judge Waties.
In 1830, the momentous difficulties of a convention, lead- ing to nullification, began to unfold themselves. Right or wrong, many citizens of the State devoted to its interests looked forward with great apprehension to the "coming events." Among this number was Judge Huger. He thought it was his duty to represent St. Phillip's and St. Michael's in the House of Representatives. He resigned his place as a Judge, and was returned a member. The storm came on, and waxed stronger and stronger. Judge Huger met it boldly and manly ; but he was overborne. He found that standing, as he then did, he could not control the House as he once did. The convention of '32 succeeded. The Judge was a member from Horry. The silence which he advised, and which the small number of Union men in that body observed, was, I think, a fatal mistake. If in 1832 and 1833 the Union delegates had spoken out fully and freely, much of the sub- sequent measures of violence would have been avoided.
Judge Huger had for many years desired a seat in the United States Senate. This was long deferred. At last, in December, 1842, he was elected to the Senate, and took his place. He soon found that it neither suited his habits nor his taste. He resigned in '45, to make room for Mr. Calhoun to return to the Senate, and sought the occupations of his plantations and the society of his family and friends.
The vexed question of secession brought him from his re- tirement; and with his venerable friend, Judge Cheves, he appeared on the floor of the Convention of '52, to advise, as the Nestors of a past age, with their younger compeers. Again South Carolina passed the fiery ordeal unscathed.
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Never do I pass his hospitable mansion in Meeting street Charleston, without in imagination grasping, in more than common friendship, the hand of my friend. He stands before me now. Every one looking at him would say he was born to command. He was a fearless, but at the same time a prudent man. Those who did not know him intimately, thought him rash. This was, however, a great mistake. In December, 1830, an impulsive member of the House of Rep- resentatives used words, which he thought and felt, reflected most improperly upon him. His answer to the argument was more than usually cool, clear and temperate. "Personal imputations," he said, " were not to be answered there." He challenged his opponent to meet him before sunrise of the next day. Friends interfered and settled the affair, and his opponent in his place, next day, did himself the honor to pro- nounce a panegyric on the Judge. Meeting me after this had occurred, and knowing that my principles had been always opposed to duelling, he said : "No doubt you thought I acted rashly ; but," said he, " my son and daughter were in the gallery, and heard the words, and I knew if I did not act immediately, my son would take up the quarrel, and then the consequences might have been fatal. Hence I chose to meet the issue myself."
If the brigade of State troops had been raised, and had taken the field, Judge Huger would have been known as the hero of many a battle. But as God in his mercy ordered, war passed away, and the Judge, instead of being crowned as a victorious general, with the blood-stained laurel, was destined to wear the never-fading chaplet of the legislator and jurist. He lived long and he lived usefully, and has left to his numerous posterity an inheritance of fame, which ought to be and will be cherished by them as long as memory lingers over the tomb of the spotless patriot and the just Judge.
The Judge married in 1800, Isabella Izard Middleton, a daughter of the "signer of the Declaration." He raised ten children, five sons and five daughters, two of whom preceded him to the tomb. After several weeks of sickness, he died at
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Sullivan's Island on the 21st August, 1854, and is interred at Magnolia Cemetery.
Daniel E. Huger ;- at the call of that name, how fresh is memory with remembrances of his many high and noble qualities. As we are about to close this sketch, his erect and manly form is distinctly before us,-there he stands, full six feet high-with those strongly marked features, so indicative of indomitable character-the ponderous brows, from beneath which shone those deep grey eyes, the light from which resembles a flash of the lightning from a heavy and darkening cloud, and like it, scattering light upon the darkness around. He was one of the bravest men we ever knew,-an old Roman, and such a one as Rome may well have been proud of, in her palmiest day. Bonum virum facile dixeris-mag- num libenter.
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JOSIAH JAMES EVANS.
Judge Evans was born in the district of Marlborough, on the 27th November, 1786. He was descended from Welsh parents, who constituted part of that colony who settled the Welsh Neck, on Pee Dee. I have often heard him speak of his step-mother, and of his causeless aversion to her when he was a boy. Hence, I suppose, his mother died when he was young. From a letter of General Campbell, the Consul at Liverpool, to his son-in-law, Judge Evans' eldest son, I see he received a part of his academic education at Fayetteville, North Carolina. He was among the earliest pupils of the South Carolina College. He graduated in the third class (in 1808). The distinguished men, Col. James Gregg, Gov. John Murphy, the Rev. William T. Brantly, Gov. Stephen D. Miller, Chancellor William Harper, Judge Nathaniel A. Ward, the Rev. Charles Strong, the Rev. Joseph Lowry, the Rev. James Lowry, George Davis, and Charles Stevens, Esq., were his classmates. They were indeed the lights of the college, in her early days. Of that class of thirty Gen. McQueen states that only three survive. On looking over the catalogue I sup- pose they are Lieut .- Gov. William J. Dubose, Thomas Gaillard, Esq., and William H. Mckenzie. He studied law under his brother-in-law, Mr. Hanson, who had been a Professor in the College during his Collegiate course. He was admitted to the Bar, as a lawyer, 28th November, 1811, and as Solicitor in Equity 19th December, 1812. He was the Commissioner in Equity for Cheraw district in 1812, how he obtained the office, whether by election, or by appointment of the Governor, I do not know. In that year, October, 1812, he was elected a member of the House of Representatives, for Marlborough, the district of his nativity, and where he then resided. He must, of course, have vacated his office before the election. Gen. Campbell, in his letter to Judge Evans' eldest son says, (after graduation in the South Carolina College, Judge Evans in 1808, and he in 1809), "We both returned to our native
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district, Marlborough, and were actively the advocates of reform of the Constitution, suffrage, and representation of our native State, and although very young, were warmly solicited to become candidates for the Legislature, as representatives of a policy, and what was then esteemed an ultra Democratic principle, universal suffrage. I was under twenty-one, and with much difficulty persuaded your father to become a can- didate, and he was elected (if my memory does not fail me) the first Democratic representative, who in that district had triumphed over the Federal party."
He served in the House of Representatives in 1812 and 1813. He was appointed in 1812, by Governor Allston, one of his Aids, which gave him the rank and title of Colonel.
On Christmas day, 1813, he married Miss - DeWitt, of Society Hill, Darlington district, and removed to that district, and to the family residence of his wife's father. He imme- diately entered upon a large and lucrative practice, which increased year by year, until he was elected a Judge.
In October, 1816, he was returned a member of the House of Representatives, for Darlington district, and in December, 1817, he was elected solicitor of the Northern, now called the Eastern circuit.
The duties of that office he filled to the entire satisfaction of every one, and was elected again and again without opposi- tion.
At the annual meeting, November, 1818, Josiah J. Evans was elected a Trustee of the South Carolina College, and con- tinued in that office, by election, or ex-officio, until his pro- motion to the United States Senate in 1852.
In December, 1829, he was elected a Circuit Judge, and in December, 1835, on the abolition of the Court of Appeals, he became a Judge, not only in the first, but also in the last resort. On the 9th of October, 1850, he finished his excellent and unpretending digest of the Road Law. This was undertaken on my suggestion, and at the request of the late Agricultural Society, of which Governor Seabrook was President. In 1848, I had performed a similar work, at the request of the same society, in digesting the Negro Law. Judge Evans was more
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fortunate than I was. His work received the applause to which it was entitled, mine was counter to some of the slave prejudices of the day, and for the time I had to encounter what I have often done, the unpopularity of doing right. In December, 1852, he was elected a Senator in Congress. Or the evening of the 6th of May, 1858, he died at his lodgings in the City of Washington. He dined with Senator Ham- mond and returned to his room before 10, P. M., and was a corpse before 11, P. M. Thus suddenly, in his seventy-second year, closed the life of an eminent and useful servant of the people of South Carolina. Some years before his death, pro- bably in October, 1847, he lost his wife. Her death took place just as his law circuit was commencing. As the earth closed over her loved remains, he tore himself from his weeping family and reached Columbia on the 2d day of the term, ready to begin his labors ; but the Bar feeling the propriety of defer- ring the commencement of his labor, insisted that he should not begin for a day or two. This was accordingly done; and then the Judge, as usual, entered upon those duties, which he considered paramount to feeling.
After making this summary of his life it remains that I should speak of its results. As a lawyer, Judge Evans was emi- nently successful, both as a civil and a criminal advocate. Yet he had not, and he never made, any pretensions to eloquence. He stated and reasoned out his case plainly and forcibly. He was the leading advocate in sustaining Mason Lee's will; and if the report of that case in 4th McC. 181, is anything like an abstract of the case, it was a Herculean effort; but he always assured me that the report was not a fair statement, that Colonel Blanding, who was against the will, grouped together the strongest facts on his side and drew the report accordingly. As lawyers, our sphere of action were in widely separated portions of this State, I therefore only met him at the Courts of Appeal. There, however, I heard and appre- ciated his arguments. In the Legislature of 1816, I first met him, and formed an acquaintance and friendship which only terminated with his life. He was my second in the House of Representatives, when, in 1817, I moved the resolution
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prohibiting any Professor in the South Carolina College from being the Rector and Pastor of any Church. It was defeated in the House of Representatives more on the ground that the Board of Trustees was the forum in which such a motion should be made, than for any other cause. There it was subsequently moved and carried by General Robert Y. Hayne, and it has been an uniform rule now for forty years. It is right to say here, that the resolution was drawn by Dr. Maxcy, the President of the College, and that fact, as well as its propriety, more warmly enlisted Judge Evans and myself in its favor than perhaps we should other- wise have been.
As a Judge, I knew him from first to last, intimately. I have said, and repeat it, he was pure as Hale, and wise as Mansfield. He possessed and exercised the qualities of a good Judge. He was patient to hear, courteous to the Bar, and firm in his decisions. He was not a talking Judge, he stated clearly his decisions and did no more. While on the circuit his opinions were frequently the subject of review by my brethren and myself in the Court of Appeals, their usual correctness gave us little more to do than to concur in them and refer to his reasons for our conclusions. The cases of Swindler vs. Hillard & Brooks, 2 Richardson, 286; Dawson ads. the State, Riley, 103; Cregier vs. Bunton, 2 Strobhart, 487, may be referred to as examples.
In the Court of Appeals from 1836 to '52, sixteen years, we sat side by side, and when we differed, as sometimes we did, it induced me to examine more closely the grounds on which I stood. For I had as much confidence in Judge Evans' opinion as I had in that of my venerable friend, Judge, afterwards Governor, Johnson.
As senator in Congress, I think, it is only necessary to refer to his great speech in vindication of South Carolina in reply to Mr. Sumner's wanton attack in '56, to show that he was capable and able. But a few extracts from the remarks in the Senate on the occasion of his death, by his political opponents, may be referred to as just exhibits of his character as a politician. Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire, said: "When I first met Judge
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Evans on the floor of the Senate, he realized to my mind more fully than any other man whom it has ever been my fortune to meet on this floor, the ideal which I had formed in my youth of an old Roman senator. There was a calm and quiet dignity in his demeanor, and an exact justice in all that he did, which fully realized the expectations which we naturally form of the character of a senator."
Of his subsequent knowledge of him, Mr. Hale said: "It was my fortune, serving upon a committee with him during the last Congress, to know him well. He was eminently a just and kind man."
Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, said: "During the present session I have served upon the committee on Revolutionary Claims, of which our departed associate was chairman. I have spent with him in that committee room many hours devoted to business and to the exchange of ideas and opinions upon a variety of topics of a public and private nature. While we both entertained opinions with the tenacity of severe conviction, I ever found him kind, charitable, liberal and tolerant to others.
" In that committee room, I learned to appreciate his char- acter even more fully than I had when in the Senate chamber. I learned to respect, to admire, and to love him."
These testimonials from Massachusetts and New Hamp- shire, from the lips of men politically opposed to him, super- sede the panygeric of friends; all of them would say that much and more, but more need not be said.
As a friend and companion, none need to speak other than myself. Forty-one years had come and gone after we first met before his life closed. In that time, we had been most intimately associated, and my testimony is that he was a most faithful and devoted friend, and a most pleasant companion. In 1828, he and I were opponents for the office of a Judge, I was elected by a few votes; meeting immediately after in the lobby of the State House, we grasped each other by the hand, and he said, " this must not diminish our friendship; and it never did!" We were friends in life, and as a friend I love to linger over his remembrances. The Bar, the Court, and the
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citizens of Columbia, paid tribute to his memory to which I refer, and hope they may accompany this memoir. Judge Evans was a large slave-holder; that he was a kind and good master is well known to his friends. The tribute of tears when they followed his body to his garden, and saw him laid alongside of their loved mistress, and at the head of his body- servant, Randolph, was all as slaves which they could pay. It testified that they loved their master, Judge Evans. In the sacred circle of home, among his children, he was known by affection. He was a good and just father. He died leaving an immense estate, the results of industry and care, to be divided among his four sons and an only daughter.
His early friend, General Campbell, speaking of him in the letter to which I have already twice referred, says: "Your father I may be said to have always known, and I have known him to honor him through life and to regret his loss. I would, however, be perfectly happy during my own life (the little of which is now left,) if I could look upon the past with that happiness he must have felt, and a confidence that I could, as he has done, leave my children independent."
Such as this memoir has feebly portrayed, was the character of Judge Evans: it only remains to add an attempt at per- sonal description. He was of rather low stature, not more than five feet, eight; he was rather corpulent. His face was a fine one; his forehead was full, large and round; his face florid, his eyes blue; and all his features betokening kindness and firmness. He had not a gray hair in his head, as far as I could see, when we last parted in September, 1857.
It is done; the grave covers all that was mortal of Josiah James Evans; his place shall know him no more! It will not be permitted us to look upon any better man.
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WILLIAM D. MARTIN.
Judge Martin was born at Martintown, Edgefield District, 20th October, 1789. He, after a good academical education, studied law with Edmund Bacon, Esq., and by his generous aid to finish his course in that respect, attended Governor W. G. Reeves' lectures at Litchfield, Connecticut. His dili- gence there was shown by his notes of the lectures in three large folio volumes. That they contained a rare fund of legal information, I know from the fact that they were borrowed by Anderson Crenshaw, Esq., of Newberry, afterwards Judge Crenshaw, of Alabama, and were by him highly commended.
Mr. Martin, at Edgefield Court House, on the 28th of May, 1811, married Henrietta Williamson, the daughter of Dr. Peter Williamson, "who was a distinguished physician and Revo- lutionary soldier." He was admitted to the Bar 27th Novem- ber following. He was the partner of Edmund Bacon, Esq., of Edgefield, and had the principal management of a large and lucrative practice.
In February, 1813, his son, Gen'l. Martin, says his father removed to Coosawhatchie. If this be correct, he must have been living there in the Spring of 1815, when I first met him at Edgefield Court House, as the partner of Mr. Bacon.
He was elected a member of the House of Representatives, from St. Luke's Parish, in 1816. After the death of Benjamin C. Yancey, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, Mr. Martin, at the November ses- sion of the General Assembly in 1818, was elected by the Committee their Chairman. This was a high, but a deserved compliment to so young a member. But he was fully equal to the duty, and gained instead of losing reputation, by the manner in which he discharged the duties.
He was elected Clerk of the Senate on the 23d of Novem- ber, 1818, and continued in the active and correct discharge of the varied duties of his office until 1826, when he was elected to the House of Representatives in Congress. On the
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13th of July, 1824, he had the sad misfortune to loose the wife of his youth. She left four young children surviving her. In the Fall succeeding her death, he removed to Barn- well. While a member of Congress (I presume in January, 1830,) he was married a second time. His wife was Sally Maria Dorsey, the daughter of Judge Clement Dorsey, of the Supreme Bench of Maryland.
In December, 1830, he was elected a Judge of the Circuit Court of Law of this State; he soon afterwards removed to Columbia, where he resided until his death, on the 16th of November, 1833.
As a lawyer, I had but two occasions of judging of Mr. Martin's powers in that respect. In the Spring of 1815, I had a short experience at the Bar, but it seemed to me that at that closely contested term, when Solicitors Starke, Good win, Bacon, Dozier, Simpkins, Glascocke, and Jeter, were constantly before the Court on the immense dockets of that period, Mr. Martin was fully equal in tact, knowledge, and argument, to any of them. I again saw Mr. Martin, as a lawyer, in the Spring of 1829, when, as a Judge, I presided at Barnwell, Walterborough, and Coosawhatchie; and then, confessedly, he was the leader of those respective Bars. When he first went to Coosawhatchie, he had the good fortune to meet with and become the fast friend of James Louis Petigru, Esq., whose name in South Carolina is synonimous with legal learning, accumen and skill, and also with industry, virtue and benevolence. They were both young, and long practised in the same Courts, occu- pying at Coosawhatchie opposite sides of every litigated case, without the slightest interruption to their friendship. They did business with a celerity unknown to modern practitioners. They examined out of Court, and in vacation, every case, and reduced it to the actual point in dispute. To that, and that alone, they directed their testimony aud arguments. The consequence was, that the immense dockets at Coosawhatchie were disposed of at every Term, and the administration of justice there, as I have learned from my senior brethren, was a pleasure instead of trouble. Mr. Petigru's talents required a larger theatre; he therefore removed to Charleston before his friend Martin was elected to Congress.
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As a legislator, I had the opportunity of serving at two sessions, 1816 and 1817, with Mr. Martin in the House of Representatives of South Carolina. There was then, as I conceived, a larger array of talent in that body than I ever saw there before, or have seen since. I need only say that Judge Huger, Sam'l Farrow, Joseph Gist, Chancellor William Harper, Benjamin C. Yancey, Daniel Barnwell, Judge Evans, were some of the members who then figured as Representatives of the people of South Carolina, to justify my assertion. In this array Mr. Martin was always found to be equal to the best. In Congress he was associated with Hayne, McDuffie, Hamil- ton, and Carter, and among them he occupied no inferior position.
As a Judge, I knew Judge Martin intimately. It was my fortune to be a Judge of the Court of Appeals during the short time he was spared to the people of the State as a Judge. During the long sitting of the Court of Appeals, in January, 1832, in Columbia, he sat in the place of Judge Harper, who had been persuaded to leave the Bench for a period to attend at Washington, with Professor Dew, to endeavor to bring Congress to consider the Tariff in the proper point of view. Then and there I had the opportunity to admire his admi- rable temper, his quick and ready perception of the points of a cause, and the uniform correctness of his judgment. Few of his opinions are on record. The case of ex parte Dukes and Marks, reported in a note to the case of the City Council vs, Benjamin, 2d Strob. 511, is a fine example of his reasoning powers and correct judgment.
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